The Stories Before
by reginassthief
Summary: For the OQ Prompt Party: Robin teaches Regina how to shoot an arrow and Robin sees Regina's curly hair for the first time. Also based upon an AU where the curse fails and Regina is left physically scarred from it. OQ. Robin's POV.


**For the OQ Prompt Party; Robin teaches Regina how to shoot an arrow and Robin sees Regina's curly hair for the first time. This is also based upon some art work from ages ago (I forgot who made it) but an AU where the curse backfired leaving Regina scarred from it. That's the bases of this one-shot. Hope you enjoy :)**

They keep moving constantly, never stopping for more than a few hours a day. It's better that way. They won't get caught. From or by what, Robin's unsure, but he knows that it's best to just keep moving.

She's quiet most days, keeping to herself, her hood drawn up least anyone sees her face. Sometimes Robin wonders if it was a blessing or a curse to take her from the ruins of her palace, to let her tag along with them. Maybe that's what they're running from. Very man in this pack knows just what'll happen if they're caught with the banished ex-evil queen.

He'd never met her in person, not until a few weeks ago, anyway. He heard the stories, most of them drunken exaggerations but with most exaggerations, there were some glimmer of truth behind them. He'd managed to escape the village which she later torched, lucky.

He'd heard the stories of her banishment, too, of the failed curse, how it backfired and scarred her beyond recognition. He sat in taverns and pubs listening to nearby men say how her beauty had been wiped away, how there was nothing left but a distorted face that only now held the remnants of a once beautiful creature.

The whole thing was a exaggeration.

For when Robin stumbled into that room, took in the broken walls- scarred in their own right- the ruined furniture, the scorched carpets and rugs, and she'd turned around, startled by the noise and the surprise that somebody had managed to get into the castle despite all the charms the fairies placed upon it, he hadn't seen some hideous creature, a monster he imagined from a story he'd been told as a child. Her face was barely distorted- a few scars ran here and there but nothing frightening, nothing to give a child- must less a grown man- nightmares to last him for the rest of his life.

Instead, it held its own sort of beauty- the scars- they were like paths littered across her face, worn and well-known, a safe path hiding a dark past.

She hadn't seen that, though. She still doesn't see it. It's why she keeps to herself, why she keeps to herself and lets the shadows conceal her face.

Robin spies her by the lake, wrapped in an old worn-out cloak, staring out somewhere beyond the water. He dismounts his horse, dropping down as the autumn leaves and twigs break and snap beneath his feet. He's headed over to her before Little John can take his horse away.

"We're stopping for the night," he says as he approaches closer to her. There's no fear, has never been from that first day. She has no magic anymore, that had been stripped from her the day the Charmings banished her.

"Is it safe?"

He sits beside her, close enough but far away, cautious of her space. She'd spent years after all in solitude, only herself for company. Loneliness can make a man mad, he hears his men say, it's why they keep their distance and Regina keep hers, but Robin knows he has nothing to fear. Still, distance is safer.

"We need to rest," he says. "The horses need watering, we need sleep. We don't want to be defeated by exhaustion."

"Where are we going?"

Robin thinks for a moment, a tongue between his teeth. They were headed for a harbour and that's as far as they'd planned. Stupid, he knows, they must always have a plan, and a plan B, too, but they hadn't thought that far yet.

He looks out to the water. It's bigger than a lake, a sea perhaps and he stares towards the mountains, a frown appearing across his face.

She's looking at him, he can feel it, waiting for an answer and Robin points, his finger outstretched towards those mountains. "There," he says. "That is where we're going."

"And do your men know that?"

He hears the smile in her voice and drops his hand. No, they don't, but they will do soon.

"Not that it really matters, I won't be going."

His face drops, a confused expression flittering across it. That wasn't the plan...

"What, no! You have to go."

She shakes her head, "There," and points to the mountains, "There," another point to the patch of land opposite it, "Or even there," finally pointing behind. "Anywhere we go, someone will recognise me. Someone will want to kill me. Or worse, drag me back to Snow White and her band of evil fairies." She stands suddenly then, wiping the leaves and dirt from her cloak. "I shouldn't have came. I've put you all in danger as it is."

She begins walking away and Robin has a mind to let her go, she isn't a part of his band after all, and she's right, they wouldn't be running to any harbour had they not had her along with them but still, where would she go if not with them? Not back to that castle and she can't parade around the forest alone.

"Regina, wait!" he calls, scrambling to his feet in an effort to get up. "You're not putting anyone in danger."

She spins suddenly, forcing Robin to take a step back. "Then why are you running? You wouldn't be trying to leave if you didn't have me with you."

"We have our own problems, too, you know. Nottingham, for one. There's plenty of reasons we'd want to get away."

He wasn't lying. Their last encounter with the sheriff had him swearing that the next time he laid eyes on Robin he'd have his ass thrown in jail so yes, Robin has plenty of reasons to leave the forest, Regina is just another of those reasons.

"Anywhere, without us, where would you go?"

She shrugs. She wouldn't go far, she believes herself too hideous to ask for help from the villagers and smallfolk, probably too prideful, too, she is a queen after all and if not that, then a princess. There's the case of her old manor but as far as everyone is concerned, Charming killed her father and probably gave their estate to somebody else. There was nowhere for her to go.

"Teach me to fight," she says, so suddenly that it startles Robin for a second. Wasn't she just proclaiming a second ago that she wanted to leave?

"A sword or a bow, just anything- anything so I don't feel so useless."

Robin ponders, it would be helpful if she knew how to fight, that way he or anyone else wouldn't have to be assigned on keeping her alive as well as themselves, they wouldn't have to hide her when they were attacked by mad men on the street and they wouldn't really have to come to her aid much. Of course, it would take months- possibly years- before she could become a good enough fighter and that's with the hope that she is a fast learner and already has some natural skill, but it's a start.

"The sword's are too heavy for you," he says, slowly. "But anyone can wield a bow, I guess."

.:.:.:.:.:.:.

Lessons start early, and they face a few problems.

He doesn't want to make her uncomfortable but he's seen her scars before and well, they're deep in the forest for nobody to startle upon them, and teaching her would be much easier if she didn't have the long, heavy cloak in the way.

Her hesitance doesn't surprise him.

Her hands are wrapped loosely around the ties and Robin waits, he isn't the most patient man in the world but, for this, he'll wait.

"Please," he says. "It'll be easier. Nobody will see."

He thinks he sees her look down towards her hands, a second thought, and then a nod and slowly she begins to untie the strings.

She reaches up to pull the hood down once she's finished unlacing, equally as slowly and the thing he sees first isn't the scars, it's the wild mane of hair. It springs from the confines of the hood, tattered and curled from the natural weather- rain and wind and sun. Sleep, too. It falls down in frizzy locks and Robin finds himself smiling slightly, he likes this unseen, wild side of a queen. At least in appearance.

And then she lifts her head, and the smile fades. He sees her face for the first time in weeks. Highlighted by the sun, the scars twist across her face, down her eyes, across her mouth, some even extending to her neck. Darkness conceals a lot of things but seeing the healed tissue in the light, it still doesn't frighten him. She's not a monster to be feared, not anymore.

Instead, she's broken and battered. That shell falling away as the scars on her face only show the scars inside that have been there longer.

She isn't scary.

Yet she drops her head, hiding her face in the wildness that is her hair, in shame or embarrassment, Robin's not sure but when his hand gently grips her chin, his thumb tracing blindly across one of the scars, he lifts her head, eyes meeting and he knows,

"I'm not scared. And you shouldn't be either."

He sees her swallow, eyes glassy. He'll never get rid of the shame she feels for her scars, never bat away the thoughts in her head that tell her she's not beautiful, that she's just a monster to be scared of, put there by men and women who don't know her story.

She pushes his hand away, though, and Robin lets it drop, feeling suddenly helpless in this situation. She turns, grasping the bow from the stump she'd placed it upon earlier and positioning it in her hands.

"So what do I do?" she asks.

Robin coughs, kicking straight into action as he places his hands over hers, guiding her hands into the right positions.

"You just place your hands here and," together they pull back the arrow, stretching the string until it max and finally letting go, watching it sail just off of the tree's centre. "Not bad," Robin praises. "Even if I was helping you." he adds with a grin.

It'll take some time, but they'll get there; getting the arrow in the centre is just a way to show off, you can shoot anywhere on a man and it'll knock him down either temporarily or permanently.

As for the cloak and the scars...Robin reckons that will take a bit longer, but soon he'll get her to see that she's still just as beautiful as the stories claimed her to be before.


End file.
